We’re going to learn to cut and paste kids.
We’re going to learn to cut and paste, kids.
See how one little comma makes a huge difference?
I almost didn’t pass my seventh grade English grammar class because I could not for the life of me diagram a sentence. I think my teacher, Miss McDermott, gave me a mercy pass. The irony doesn’t escape me that now as a writer I wrestle daily with my greatest nemesis: the comma. I’ve learned that you can’t escape your fate. Apparently, I was destined to tussle with grammar!
It took a long time for me to come to terms with my inability to grasp sentence structure. I used to sweat how to use certain punctuation, pausing my writing mid-flow to ask someone the proper way to write a list (is there a comma before the ‘and’ or not?), when to write out numbers vs. when to use numerals, dashes vs. parenthesis…the questions were endless. I was worrying so much about grammar, it was holding me back as a writer.
Finally a friend of mine finally took pity on me (or he just got tired of me bothering him incessantly) and told me just to keep writing and worry about the grammar later. He said the story is what people want to read so focus on that and any grammar mistakes could be easily fixed in revisions. It felt as if he had given me permission to write, in spite of my poor grammar. It was liberating which felt much better than being embarrassed about my sentence structure. So I embraced my flaw and got on with writing.
Free to write as I pleased without the rules of grammar, the story flowed. When it came time to hand my manuscript to my beta readers, I warned them to overlook my horrible punctuation. But the more positive feedback I received on my writing, the more comfortable I felt with my flaw. No one was talking about my grammar; they were talking about my characters and plot.
Ignoring my grammar while I write doesn’t mean I don’t have to deal with it at some point. You always have to face your problems in life. Grammar is an important tool in the English language that can help clearly transmit my ideas to my audience. But with the help of patient editors and readers, all my grammatical errors can be corrected, ensuring my story will flow with ease.
Let’s face it, no one is good at everything. So if I have a talent for telling a story, I can accept the fact that I have a troubled relationship with grammar. All my editors have made incredulous comments about my punctuation choices and, while I’m slightly embarrassed, I just shrug it off. After all, no one ever read War and Peacefor Tolstoy’s stellar use of commas. Embrace your flaw, whatever it is and don’t let it keep you from doing what you want to do.